


A Back to Curl Into

by Spitshine



Series: Growing Up to War [1]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Ambiguous Age, Ambiguous Relationships, Anonymous Sex, Character/Cultural Study, Homosocial Society, In That None of Them Have Names, M/M, Non-Explicit Sexual Content, Not Even For Their Own Selves, Patriarchy So Thick You Could Cut It With a Knife, Rites of Passage, War Pup on War Pup Action
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-04-01 00:16:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3998683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spitshine/pseuds/Spitshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>They're left more or less to raise themselves, summoned twice a day by the huge bell out back of West Tower to a trough that's full of gruel for about ten minutes and otherwise ignored til they're big enough to be useful.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Back to Curl Into

**Author's Note:**

> I can't tell you how fascinated I am by what it means to grow up in a warrior society like this. They'll get names in the next one.

The war pups grow up in a mass. With each passing moon, less and less of their time is their own, more and more of their days belong to Immortan Joe, running the machines that run the Citadel. They are each a small, painted pale part of his inexorable engine.

When they're not at work, pulling chains or learning motors, running or fetching for the tall, wiry War Boys, they scour the warren of tunnels, poking into every nook and abandoned cranny. The brave ones—and they're all brave, brave enough to face the outside if they're not brave enough to face their mates' teasing—even go up above of a night and stare long and hard at the silent moon. Like them, the moon lives and dies and lives again, smudged black and silver over all that white.

No one, not no one, knows the Citadel back and front like one of the Immortan's war pups. Everyone knows the room where the bones lie, and they all know not to talk about it. They all know when it's time to plant a new set in there, show up silent and staring when one of them lays down in the corner and never gets up.

They all know what not to talk about. They're left more or less to raise themselves, summoned twice a day by the huge bell out back of West Tower to a trough that's full of gruel for about ten minutes—mother's milk and coarse grain cooked almost soft—and otherwise ignored til they're big enough to be useful, but they all know what not to talk about. Bluster and blister is all good, and it's never too young to start hoping on Valhalla, but no one ever gives voice to half-remembered mothers. To any touch beyond a strike or a grapple.

The younger ones are never alone, a squirming mass of wrestling boy-limbs in a cavern deep underground. Even when they explore, they go in twos or threes, fingers hooked into ragged belt loops as they stumble barefoot and mostly blind through tunnels the sun never touches.

No one bothers to name them until they cut their mouths and they mostly don't either. They find their pods by smell and touch when their hive mind separates enough to crave specific companionship and won't part until they're War Boys grown and one goes to Valhalla, shiny and chrome, unless one slips off in the endless night under the city.

Hardly a single pod makes it to rip their mouths together. Life is fast for a War Boy and faster yet for a pup. The room of bones is stacked full and filling still, and there's always another pup alone. Even to themselves, they're mostly interchangeable. The important thing is to have a mate, a back to curl into when it's time to sleep and watch when it's time to war.

They play at being big. They won't be given blades for moons and moons yet, and no weapon goes unclaimed in the Citadel long enough to make its way down to a pup, but there's sharp stones and rusted metal and sometimes even broken glass free for the taking on the ground, and they scratch each other up. Arms and legs and pale round bellies. The practice their diagrams, draw their world of rigs and rocks—a few even know some letters and will scraggle a large “IJ” or “V,” imparting the powerful names in a whisper as they do. The welts redden and fade and are raised again.

—

There's no light in the pit they've claimed for themselves, too far from the creaking skylights for the sun to ever limp down, so it's impossible to know if it's day or what, when they're down here. The ones that crawl into the corner never to move again can be said to sleep through the endless night, but otherwise none of the pups sleep for more than an hour or two on end. One of the bodies under them gets up, or a wrestling match breaks out, or they hear the hot, quiet gasps of the pups old enough to want but too young to war. 

None of them talk about it.

They wake, and hold their breath, and listen well. They strain their eyes trying to see how one of them, a tool, a thing, just a half-formed piece to the Immortan's unstoppable war machine, could make a noise like that, half growl and half gentle. They don't talk about it after. They don't even think about it anywhere someone could see their eyes.

They might crawl into corners or dead end passages with their podmates and pin them to the wall with their own growing, needy bodies, lingering baby fat and new muscle, but they never voice what they're doing. None of them would have the words even if they wanted to.

They don't want to. This, this touching, this almost-kindness, is the scariest thing a war pup can do.

_A back to curl into_ , he thinks to himself as he fits his body around his mate's. He lost his balance—or maybe his mate did, hard to tell themselves apart when they're so close, when there's so much skin sliding together—at one point and they both fell to their knees, gritted their teeth at the rough pain and inhaled the familiar, comforting scent of their own blood.

He feels his own skin heat and wonders what he looks like, if he'll turn red like the skin around the Immortan's eyes, if this means they'll be War Boys soon. He's been in this pod for a long while now, time enough to see the moon fatten six times together, time enough to get three new scars on purpose, and he'd be chrome to have this one staple his face back together.

Thinking of it, mouths and blood and bodies split open, is too much right now, like this, too overwhelming with the reality of what flesh can do assaulting all of his senses, and he fits one hand around his mate's throat, tugs his head back to bite and lick at that not-yet-bleeding mouth.

One of them hisses. One of them topples them both over and they land heavy on their sides, him still pressed flushed to his mate's back. Usually he's the short one, but being smashed together like this makes him tall enough to sink his teeth into his mate's shoulder and choke off his noises in the clay-painted flesh.

He bites down now, pressing himself closer as he slides a hand down the flat front of the other pup's torso. _A back to watch_.


End file.
